The five-day Winter School on 'Nanotechnology in Advance Drug Delivery' has begun at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER), S.A.S. Nagar (Mohali). Professor N Sathyamurthy, director, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Mohali inaugurated the third winter school.

Professor N Sathyamurthy, well known chemist delivered the keynote address entitled 'Playing with the Bucky ball!' In his address, he said that, there are lots of opportunities to explore in the field of pharmaceutical nano technology. He added that budding nanotechnologist have great talent and potential to discover novel chemical entities in the field with the availability of modern technology.

Welcoming the delegates, speaker and participants, Professor K K Bhuatni, director of NIPER said that recently nanotechnology has become a popular term representing the main efforts of current science and technology. Nanotechnology, which is still not a mature technology and thus, more appropriately called nano science, usually refers to research at the scale of 100 nm or less. He added that one of the important areas of nanotechnology is 'nano medicine', which, according to the National Institute of Health (NIH) Nano medicine Roadmap Initiative, refers to highly specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases. He said that this school will provide excellent networking opportunities within the participants, pharma industries, faculty of the school and NIPER.

Professor Saranjit Singh, dean, NIPER introduced the chief guest of the function to the audience whereas professor Arvind K Bansal, head, Department of Pharmaceutics, NIPER proposed the vote of thanks.

Earlier, similar types of winter schools were conducted in the year 2007 and 2009. Fifty selected students are participating in the school sponsored by Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.

Dr Sanyog Jain, convener of the winter school explicated the objective of the five day's event. He said that the major emphasis of this school is to encourage and motivate the young talent of this country in the area of Nanotechnology applications in drug delivery.